Break and Mend
by Universitas
Summary: Joker never got along with his commander. So why did he stay to the end after being on the receiving end of Hunter Shepard's fury? *mentions of M!Shepard/Ashley and hints of M!Shepard/Miranda*


**Break and Mend  
><strong>_by Universitas / c_saber _

Joker knew those footsteps all too well.

In the SR-1's cockpit, regular brow beatings and asshole remarks taught Joker's muscles to tense up whenever he heard that rapid dull thump on the floor behind him. But at least there was _some_ mutual respect underneath all the "assholes" and "clowns" thrown his way. On the new _Normandy_, however…

Suffice to say that Joker nearly jumped at hearing the sound in the empty mess hall. _Just keep your eye on the coffee machine_, he told himself. _Drip, drip, drip. _Except nothing came. No scathing remark, nothing. Commander Shepard merely opened the fridge on the other end of the kitchen and stuck his head inside. Definitely a first.

Maybe Horizon burned it all out of him. _"Never say that name to me again. I don't need shit from you."_ That time, Joker had picked up something else underneath Shepard's usual hostility: sadness, bitterness, exhaustion. Whatever it was, the man just sounded _beaten._

He caught his gaze flicking towards Shepard's rummaging again. _Eyes on the coffee._ These days, he didn't know what would set the commander off on one of his rants or bitch-outs. Even a brief moment of eye contact posed a risk, it seemed.

Seconds later, Shepard was still looking through the fridge, and Joker was still waiting on his coffee. But if this silence kept up, nothing would happen. Either Shepard found something and left, or Joker's coffee finished and he left. At least Joker hoped so. _Drip, drip, drip_. Just a little bit more and—

"Why are you even here?"

Shit.

Joker dared to look right. Shepard's eyes were still fixed on the fridge. Joker let the silence settle back in for a few more moments, unable to come up with an answer to a question he didn't quite get.

"Why are you even here?" Shepard asked again, this time with more force. "On this ship, idiot."

"I'm the pilot?"

"You're the pilot. Because the Illusive Man picked you." Great, it was another of Shepard's rhetorical questions. "The same old bullshit about picking the best for this mission. And since everyone believes you're the best pilot…" The man looked back at him. Joker fought the impulse to wince at the sight of those red-tinged blue eyes. "Here you are." Then Shepard backed away from the fridge and stood straight. "But the Illusive Man forgot something. I don't just need the best. I need people I can trust.

Shepard's arm swung out in a wide arc, gesturing at the hall. "And he expects me to trust all these Cerberus goons while he and his pet AI and those bitches Chambers and Lawson spy on me 24/7?" A step towards Joker. "And he expects me to trust you? I wouldn't be here if you'd just listened to me—"

_"He'd still be here if you hadn't stayed,"_ Ashley had told him once after the funeral, though she apologized quickly after. Shepard didn't have the same courtesy. "I couldn't just leave—"

Answering that charge was the first mistake. "You could've. Instead you stayed and I had to drag you into the escape shuttle. And you know what happened after that." Shepard struggling to get back. The shuttle's automatic launch going off. The _Normandy_ exploding. "Now look where I am. Surrounded by terrorists on all sides, and _you're with them_."

"Because—"

"What? They let you fly?" They did, after the Alliance took the sky and let him waste away without a ship. "Remember how they also 'let' an entire colony turn into husks? How they killed Admiral Kahoku?" Another step. Joker responded by taking one himself, backwards. "The Alliance was right in grounding you. I shouldn't have let you touch this ship in the first place, but I was too damn shell-shocked to say anything."

Joker shut his mouth there. Shepard had taken to one of his rants again, better to just let it run its course and hope for the best.

"So here I am. Working with terrorists, being watched by terrorists, and being called a terrorist by the Council, by the Alliance…" Shepard dropped his gaze to the floor. "… and by Williams." His tone dropped just slightly as Shepard took another step.

A blue aura enveloped his clenched fist. Its hum combined with Shepard's heavy breathing.

Okay, maybe this wasn't just a rant. Joker inched in the direction of the elevator while Shepard stood completely still. The aura around his fist now flared around his whole body. And when Shepard looked back up at him…

Fear had barely turned into panic when Joker's feet left the ground. The rush of invisible force, then the impact of metal and the sickening crack and warm wetness on his back and _pain_ and—

_"This is your fault." _Shepard advanced on him, growling more like some animal than a man. His fist pulsed again and Joker made out its rise through all the burning—god it hurt.

Suddenly he realized: this was it. Shepard of all people was going to kill him. He forced his eyes closed as the commander _roared_ and let his fist fly. Just a fraction of a second, a burst of more pain and it would be over, _just get it over with_ and—

A fraction of a second turned into a second. One second became two. _What?_ And he dared to open his eyes. Shepard's knuckles had frozen barely an inch shy of Joker's face, but…

"I'm sorry." Miranda…

Another crack and Shepard's aura faded and the commander collapsed. Joker felt himself drifting to the floor.

"Joker, you all right?" Jacob? "Joker."

"Get him into the med-bay. EDI, get Dr. Chakwas…" Sounds muddled and sight waned and even the agony dulled until everything had blurred together. Then that blur gave way to blackness.

Green and white were the first to wash over him as his eyelids inched open. _Ash was right_, he thought, but only for a moment. The green and white sharpened soon enough, and Joker found himself in the _Normandy_'s medical bay. Not the afterlife.

"How are you feeling?" He tried turning his head to the side to catch the voice's source, but a gloved hand quickly caught his cheek. "Lie still. You shouldn't strain yourself with excessive movement."

He groaned as Dr. Chakwas emerged from the corner of his eye. "You were incredibly lucky," she said. "Most of your ribs were shattered, but no fragments pierced your lungs. You'll have to spend a few days here; Miranda doesn't want you piloting the ship with a smashed ribcage."

Grounded, again. "Wait, Miranda?"

Chakwas nodded. "Miranda confined Shepard to his quarters, at least for now. The Illusive Man gave her temporary command while she sorts things out with the commander."

_"This is your fault."_ A dull ache clawed at Joker's chest. His hand instinctively rose to clutch it, but Chakwas again caught his arm and guided it back to his side. "He's probably not happy about that."

"Commander Shepard hasn't been… happy for a while. Not since he woke up for the first time, it would seem." Chakwas brought up her omni-tool and a few graphs. "He was never the easiest commander to serve under, but a mindless rage? That's worrying."

"More like piss-your-pants scary."

She was right though. Serving under Shepard meant just as much enduring Shepard and everything packed with him as actually serving. _Unless your name's Ashley Williams_, he supposed. He thought back to the mess hall, the fury, the agony, and wondered for the nth time what exactly she saw in him. And Shepard's question had a point to it, too, when Joker thought about it. Why was he still here? If that merciless beating he had taken proved something, it was that Joker didn't have the place on the _Normandy_ that he used to. That begrudging respect exemplified in the Mako drop on Ilos? Gone.

And if that was gone, why wasn't he? Why didn't he just pack up and leave?

He asked himself that question again after Tali's trial, when Tali through the airlock with slumped shoulders and a masked gaze fixed on the floor—because Shepard handed over that evidence. And again after Shepard nearly got himself killed fighting the Blood Pack, when a bunch of the crew had gathered around a completely wrecked commander in the med-bay and they'd all realized that things weren't as clear-cut as Illusive Man made it out to be.

The way Joker saw it, the _Normandy_ SR-2 had become a chicken with its head cut off.

And he was just about to call it quits the third time. He hobbled over to Miranda's office, saying "Hey Miranda, I quit, find yourself another pilot" in his head for the nth time, at the point where he almost thought he already had that conversation.

The office door opened, but not for him. Out walked Shepard, who didn't even spare him a passing glance. Joker stepped inside and found Miranda frowning at her screen. Not that bitchy frown, but a _shaken_ frown. Disturbed. The XO looked up at him. "Yes?" With that, the Miranda he knew—tough, icy, head-bitch-in-charge—came back, though what he saw half a second before…

"I…" _I quit, find yourself another pilot_. But his voice caught in his throat. And he found himself saying "He comes around here a lot?"

Miranda pursed her lips. "Yes, he does." Ship scuttlebutt told him the same thing. "Now what do you need?" She stared at him for a moment with those ice blue eyes.

_I quit, find yourself another pilot._ Instead, he said, "He's damn awkward with women. You should've seen him and Ash on the old _Normandy_. Some of the things he said were worth drinking—" He stopped himself, shook his head, and took a deep breath. "Look, I don't know if I can deal with—"

"Shepard?" And for a fraction of a second that less-certain Miranda showed up. "I'm surprised you of all people haven't asked to leave yet. Is that why you're here?"

He only nodded.

But instead of bitching out or scowling, Miranda shook her head. "Check your messages."

_Random thing to say. _"What?"

"Check your messages," she said, slower that time.

With a shrug he popped open his omni-tool and did so. A window of unopened e-mails greeted him, mostly things from his subscriptions, a few from some old friends back on Arcturus and flight school…

And one marked—

He looked back up at Miranda, who only gave him a nod. Joker opened the message, and half a minute later he found himself damning the woman. Both of them.

A month later he was still on the _Normandy_, through the dead Reaper and the Collector base, Aite and Hagalaz. Even past Paracelsus, in the next month that Shepard spent away from the ship. In some weird way, Joker envied the commander for being able to call it quits and cut the cord. Even though, if EDI's reports were accurate, Shepard used that away time to crush all the Cerberus bases he could take his shotgun to. And Joker had to admit that Shepard was damn lucky that his not-so-favorite pilot still helmed his not-so-favorite ship during the whole Alpha Relay mess. Part of him thought that Admiral Hackett set the whole thing up—minus the indoctrination and the star-destroying explosion—to get the commander back on his ship.

So. The Shadow Broker was dead, Admiral Stanislav Lee was dead, Doctor Amanda Kenson was dead, the Reapers were on the galaxy's doorstep, and Joker was still in the pilot's seat of the _Normandy_ SR-2 with the memory of a smashed ribcage. _Fate, you are a bitch._

And he still jumped a little at the sound of those footsteps.

"Moreau."

Joker tapped the button and spun the chair around. Shepard stood there, arms crossed as usual. His hair had almost grown back to the way it was before his old-time high-and-tight. But at least the commander had fixed up his face. No more demon-possessed redeye. "Uh… hey, Commander."

"So. Why are you still here?" That question again, and the memory associated with it brought the phantom ache in Joker's chest. "After I left, I thought you'd jump ship at the first opportunity."

But this time, Joker had an answer. "Blame Ash. Miranda, too, I guess." He glanced to the side. "EDI?"

Shepard's brow furrowed, and he took a step forward. Joker looked over his shoulder at the new window among the navigation monitors.

_Hey Joker,_

_Garrus told me what happened with you and Skipper. With Tali, too._

_Skipper's not the easiest person to like, and I bet everything's made getting along with him even harder. He isn't as bad as people make him out to be. He's just tired.I can't really describe it more than that._

_So if you ever consider leaving, don't._

_I need you watch him for me. You can do that better than anyone else, and there's nobody else on that ship I trust more. He needs that eye in the sky in case he screws up._

_And if you do leave, well… you don't want to. Good luck with everything._

_Ash_

The best part was the look on Shepard's face. He stepped back and looked at Joker the way someone looked at a freak the first time. "So," Joker said, "That's why I'm still here. Ash is damn hard to turn down." A pause. "Didn't expect that, did you?"

"No, I didn't." Shepard glanced at the message again, then back at Joker. "Thanks."

Joker blinked. "Wait, you're thanking me? That's a change."

"Don't get used to it." In an instant Shepard had his usual expression back on. _Dammit._ Joker was enjoying that showy brick-drop, too. "You're still an ass. Nothing will change that." He turned around and started down the corridor to the CIC.

Joker watched him leave, grinning. "You heard that, EDI? I got props from Commander Shepard."

"I would suggest that you not allow it to inflate your already considerable ego, Jeff." A pause. "That was a joke."

He shrugged. "Secretly, I bet he loves me." It was a start, he had to admit. And with Commander Shepard, Butcher of Torfan and all that crap, Joker would take what he could get.


End file.
